Γ΄ συνέδριο της Ευρωπαϊκής Εταιρείας Νεοελληνικών Σπουδών

Ημερολόγιο

Nicholas A. E. Kalospyros

ALEXANDROS PAPADIAMANTIS AND THE LANGUAGE QUESTION

If we could justify the assertion that Papadiamantis’s otherworldliness is a fair palate of his indulging in profound lyrical reveries about human nature, we should have attended closely to his linguistic medium for their respective description; in a modern Greek state being especially tantalized by the so-called “Language Question”[1], Papadiamantis’s case should have gained a particular attention under serious remarks relevant to it, such as that “in the spheres of poetry and fiction, the search for a written language has historically been in essence a search for precedents”[2], not to mention the major issue of relating to the History of Classical Scholarship. Therefore, for Alexandros Papadiamantis (1851-1911), one of the most compendious diachronic Greek authors, who occupies a unique and legendary status as a writer of prose-fiction in our literature, the demanding challenge to underline his attitude towards the linguistic debate aims to develop discussion of a particular dimension of his work which earlier critics have already acknowledged but not sufficiently elaborated on.

It remains undisputable that, though his works are susceptible of a bewildering variety of multiple as well as of contradictory interpretations –in opposition to the disruptive impact of a cosmopolitan Westernism and insulting modernity which evoced the writer’s cautiousness, whereby he poetically glossed a sense of subjectivity familiar in the Greek writers and typically related by him to his childhood years, since his literary landscape is dominated by God–, Papadiamantis’s hieratic efforts to conjure up a divine presence in the words of the ancestral language entail the fully purposive use of different phases of Greek language. Behold the elliptical picture of the unrivalled language-independency of Papadiamantis: we can observe such manoeuvres of poetic utterance in the trends of linguistic usage throughout the last centuries in intellectual life and in the contiguous debate about the place of the ancient language in the school curriculum, both of which are often unintelligible without a complete understanding of the Language Question. Although this dualism in language –in the form of an escalating competition of archaization and purifying mechanisms that expunged many non-Greek features from the written language and enriched the modern Greek language with newly coined words and morphological forms lacking in the colloquial modern Greek but appropriate to different linguistic situations– originated in the phenomenon of Atticism[3], the Language Question appeared to be a modern phenomenon as an increasingly polarized linguistic debate turning into a strict contradiction between i) the revival of long-vanished linguistic features and purism prescriptions, by many writers, especially those involved in more learned pursuits, who cultivated a pompous rhetoricism, and ii) the extremes reached by the proponents of demoticism, a language closer to the spoken standard, who produced neologisms. Those writing in katharevousa[4], i.e. using variable linguistic features of vocabulary, grammar and syntax based on Ancient Greek (a modified form of Atticistic Greek) and feeling themselves as the rightful inheritors of the classical world, and thus proclaiming their Greek national identity as closely linked to language, “αφού γλώσσα και θρησκεία είναι τα κυριώτερα γνωρίσματα έθνους” [290. 23][5], couldn’t avoid the accusation of exploiting an artificial and inexisting language that was invented by indigenous scholars “αφόρητος δε μάλιστα τοις αλλοφύλοις ελληνισταίς”[6]. Thus, rehearsing the disseminated in the Greek-speaking world arguments of the expatriate classical scholar Adam. Korais, whose model prevailed as the official written language, it seemed inadequate to interact with the reality of Greek language controversy, i.e. the embattled contours and the consequences of the “Language Question”, resulting in the diglossia[7] institutionalized as a formal division within written usage[8]. So, this substitute for socio-political action within modern Greek bourgeois class[9], was one facet of scientific retrogression, nationalism and irredentism, while “the debate itself can now be interpreted as a symptom of what is often called a ‘reification’ or ‘objectivization’ of language, developed to an unusually high degree”[10] and since it has been disputed that the elite language declines and also compromises with the vernacular causing a fusion from which the standard language is born[11]. The literary position of Papadiamantis offers us –and here lies the noble desideratum of our view– the chance not to re-examine the “Language Question” but to approach its essence and simultaneously appraise the way he managed to reverse it by reclaiming the entire history of the Greek language and regaining access to the wide range of a literary language along with its diversity, his preferences among ecclesiastical tradition and sterile scholasticism being neither repeatable nor completely translatable.

In another of his writings, he was wondering in presenting a good sense of humour: “Δεν ηξεύρω διατί, προ χρόνων, όταν εσκεπτόμην αν έπρεπε να γράψω την παρούσαν μελέτην, εσχεδίαζα να την επιγράψω, Ταξόανα. Διατί άρα; Μήπως εσκόπουν ν' απαντήσω εις ‘Τα είδωλα’ του μακαρίτου Ροΐδου;” [291. 8-10]. In his study The Idols, published in 1893, Emm. Roïdis supported the cause of the spoken language, although he expressed himself in an elegant katharevousa. Eleven years before, the Observations on the Language by K. Kontos (1834-1909) were published in Athens, summing up what he had elsewhere published separately. Kontos was professor at the University of Athens since 1868, a pupil of the Dutchman C. G. Cobet; his tendencies to correctness on Atticistic ground and his intensive archaism made him an architect of purism, who, like his intellectual ancestor Phrynichus, believed that he could eradicate linguistic anarchy through variations, mistakes, barbarism and solecism, by enriching the poor and vulgar Greek vernacular. Beyond Kontos’s ultraconservatism, Papadiamantis conceded his knowledge of Greek and his right to lead a chaste struggle for the notion of ελληνοέπεια: “Είτα ο στιβαρός Κόντος, του οποίου τον ζυγόν δυσκόλως υπέφερον οι γράφοντες, καί τινες μάλιστα επροσπάθουν μάτην να τον γελοιοποιήσουν –και όμως, με τον καιρόν οι ίδιοι υπέκυψαν– υπέδειξε το ορθόν” [292. 28-31]. He esteemed highly those who knew to express themselves in a “flourishing” Greek language, as he accepts in the obituary he wrote for Father Dionysios: “ήτο δε δόκιμος ελληνιστής ο ανήρ, και τοσούτον ώστε τας προς λογίους επιστολάς αυτού έγραφεν εν ανθηρώ Ελληνικώ λόγω” [328. 30-31]. But in other cases, Papadiamantis resorted to ironical comments: “Ας ευχηθώμεν καλήν πρόοδον εις τους νεογλωσσίτας” [290. 18]. His ironic mood must not be interpreted as an acrimonious attack on his opponents, but rather be seen as product of his dramatic agony. The contradiction between the reality and the phenomena motivates his irony, while this ironical reductio ad absurdum advances to the expressis verbis revealing of the genuine literary intention. Then, he hurls the modified ironic oppositions with unequalled acumen, thus combining stylistic scholarship with Christian eschatological viewing[15].

Consequently, due to manifest ignorance of the Language Question and its significance, the opinions of the critics on the kind of Papadiamantis’s language –that gives life to the writer’s homesickness– are divided. Some scholars hastened to depict Papadiamantis’s style by means of oversimplified aphorisms, compared to the taste of his generation and their own grasp. Other philologists emphasized on the opinion that he was tightened to the chariot of katharevousa adding that his katharevousa was entirely personal and inconsistent; others reached the conclusion that it is possible to discern between the different layers/levels of his language: the popular spoken language, almost photographically recorded and often with idioms from Skiathos, which he used in dialogue; an admixture of katharevousa with many demotic elements (perhaps the most individual style), which he used in narration; and a more archaizing katharevousa, a kind of traditional prose language inherited from the earlier generation, which he reserved for his lyrical digressions. Papadiamantis was introduced as an author of high quality representing katharevousa, “so that a respected puristic tradition has established itself. Papadiamantis was a particularly important actor in this because of his great popularity, his stories being serialized and read aloud in village cafés”[17]. For instance, K. Chatzopoulos characterized Papadiamantis’s katharevousa as pedantic, A. Terzakis as problematic, M. M. Papaïoannou as inert survival of the past and P. Moullas as a language undisciplined dressed in her puristic garment, whilst T. Agras and O. Elytis regarded it a language with a history through the centuries, hoarded up from multiple cultural layers, and Z. Lorentzatos along with N. B. Tomadakis a language which denies its submission to the monochrome of the one or another expression. Ar. Nikolaïdis considered Papadiamantis’s work from a linguistic aspect to be a self-evident overstepping of the linguistic debate between demotic and katharevousa[18]. In the opinion of the majority of scholars Papadiamantis’s katharevousa should be considered Byzantine or, at least, sacerdotal.

Still the problem remained: What was such an author trying to do, e.g. when he applied his lyric confession in the “Rosy Shores”, pouring deep suffering, tender longing and transcendent eroticism lingering in him? Cherishing the vivid tradition of Mount Athos, he chose a language that could grant him the pathway from prose to poetry, and, in other words, its supersubstantial prosperity[19]. To surpass the theoretical question between the form of written language (katharevousa vs demotic) Papadiamantis needed to possess an infinitesimal literary creature which would incorporate in morphological, typological and syntactical features the previous generations of poetical experience and literary devoutness. With detailed correlations between Homeric and Papadiamantical “language” as inseminating matrices of sublime style, we can trace the homogeneity and harmony in the tradition that Papadiamantis’s language suggests: an almost “Homeric” katharevousa (with several meaningful allusions to the classics and the Homeric models to which it may aspire), hieratic, biblical and, above all, anagogical, which would express perfectly every nostalgic whispering of lyric feelings. In declaring the admirable style of hymnography (: “Και κατά την έννοιαν και κατά την γλώσσαν τα ανωτέρω παρατεθέντα αποσπάσματα, αδιστάκτως φρονώ, ότι είναι εκ των ωραιοτέρων λεκτικών καλλιτεχνημάτων πάσης εποχής, και το λέγω χάριν εκείνων εκ των ημετέρων, όσοι εκ προκαταλήψεως νομίζουσιν, ότι δεν εγράφοντο Ελληνικά κατά τον Ζ΄ και Η΄ αιώνα, υποθέτοντες καλοκαγάθως, ότι τα παρ' ημών των σημερινών γραφόμενα είναι ελληνικά, και ότι θ' αναγνωσθώσι ποτέ ως Ελληνικά υπό των επιγιγνομένων” [135. 22-28], composed in a superlative and sublime language (“Εν γλώσση αλλοία ή η συνήθης” [152. 22]) he simply warned us that his language had to override any mundane barrier, in order to testify verbal conducts from another sphere: “Μικρολόγος σχολαστικότης αδυνατεί να αισθανθή και να εκτιμήση την παιδικήν και αγγελικήν απλότητα των θείων ρημάτων, την αγνοούσαν το κακόν, ή την περιφρονούσαν τούτο. Άλλως το μεγαλείον της ποιήσεως της ανατολικής είναι άλλο, και οι τρόποι, αι μεταφοραί και εικόνες της γλώσσης των Ιερών Γραφών δεν θα γίνωσι ποτέ νεωτερικαί ούτε δυτικαί” [220. 9-14]. That is why he couldn't but agree with Longinus writing about sublimity in an elevated style (whereas he seems not only to be representing the style indicatively but also to be expressing sublimity by embodying it in his own words[20]). Therefore, Papadiamantical language knows no simple opposition between archaism and innovation, since the innovative tendencies extend mainly to the manipulation of archaisms for literary effect[21]; as a modus loquendi it forms a suggestive symbolism that can mutually integrate the world of ancient myth into his portrayal of contemporary reality, in the sanctity of divine eros.

Apart from his personal and individual Sprachkritikastereien, he refutes dilemmas such as the imitation of classic patterns or the adoption of archaiognostic practice. In his lifelong service of the ecclesiastical speech, whereby classic Greece met Christian thought and doctrines, he reconciled stylistical imperatives and linguistic quandaries in terms of sublime beauty. By overriding the Language Question in his unique way of embracing the entire Greek language, he marked his position deliberately. He could equally align the vernacular language “ήτις είναι ζωντανή εις τα ηρωικά και ερωτικά άσματα του λαού” [237. 12-13] with any possible form of katharevousa. “True language does not confine the freedom of expression in a ‘from above’ established type of linguistic orthodoxy. […] When language does not subjugate life, but life subjugates language, then the archaizing expression can be just as much genuine as the folk song – just as the language of Kalvos, Papadiamantis and Kavafis has been true”[22].

His article “Γλώσσα και κοινωνία” (1907) [288-299] constitutes his testament on language topics. Papadiamantis summarizes his views and, at the same time, he provides us with a genuine wit. I shall touch on just to a few examples to indicate that his constant agony for the Greek language and its sacred tradition define an outline of language theory which rejects the presuppositions of holding on obscurantism and language problems and attests an uncompromising attitude towards language itself.

It is daring to imagine how the Language Question itself could stand as an ambiguous comment in Papadiamantis’s work, from the gruff demotic of the local Skiathos idiom, to liturgical Greek and back to antiquity, in an astonishing long duration, which bequeathed to our literary tradition two currents, the scholarly and the popular one. By this synaxarian mosaic empebbled on the typology of a mature katharevousa, Papadiamantis gathered around his work and opened up a world of silent devoutness and later of a laudatory loquaciousness. It is noteworthy that most of the demoticists understood well the inner relation established between Papadiamantis and the people concerning the world that was echoed through this linguistic choice, and that he had already transcended the dilemmatic questions that torture feeble minds and suspend poetic temper: Papadiamantical language fulfills the catharsis necessary for a grammatical soul to relieve from its passions, not by ordering but by conveying aesthetic magnificence, so that each one of us could advance till the summit he is able to. Surpassing the Language Question’s major problems, he became homeland and language himself, and by setting language matters right he proceeded over to a boundless poetic temper that could easily attract faithful and distrustful travellers in Greek language. Perhaps, there lies the reason why it is rather difficult, very difficult, rather impossible to render him into any foreign language, for his “idiomatic” language causes the translators’ failure to contextualize him. What can we do but follow his advice: “Ας οπισθοχωρήσωμεν, ή μάλλον ας σταματήσωμεν εδώ. Σαρκικοί, υλόφρονες και νωθροί άνθρωποι, δεν δύνανται ν' ανέλθωσιν εις τον ιερόν βράχον της Ακροπόλεως” [272. 26-28]?

[5] All references to tales of Papadiamantis appear in square brackets and refer, by page and lines’ number, to the 5th volume of the edition by N. D. Triantafyllopoulos ΑλέξανδροςΠαπαδιαμάντηςΆπαντα, Athens 1988.